Poll: Choose (3) States you would like to see next

[flight50]

Actually the first option is more somewhat more realistic to me until we know the rebuild teams moves over to paid maps or Pavel hires more mappers. 2 super teams can knock out 2 state parks as one dlc.

@werewoooooooolf . I won't reset the poll until after the xmas stream in case Kansas and/or Nebraska goes official. My guess us next year but you never know. Seems like at least Kansas has a chance to get announced if half the Texas team went there 2 months ago.

Nature scenes are always the easiest to populate for teasers. Even 4-5 pics in Kansas is enough of a hint if its unanimous enough. I'll change the polls regardless after the stream though. At this point, the poll is just for fun. With 50 mappers, the direction can be all over the place. But as soon as we get 100% confirmation of 3 paid map projects, I'll change the options to 3 choices as well.

[oldmanclippy]

It depends on how fast the team grows really, but I have my doubts that it will get much bigger than it is now. ATS just isn't mega-popular like ETS2 is. There's a limit to how many people they can hire until they need to start subsidizing the game with the earnings from ETS2.

Their output in 2023 and 2024 will tell us a lot for how they will proceed in the future. Those will be the first years where the new, larger size of the ATS team will produce to its full potential. If we get something like OK/KS/NE/AR/MO/IA/IL in that timeframe like you have in your first map, then I think 2029 would be a good guess. Such an output would already be the most productive era of ATS by a longshot (can't count 2022 since Texas was in the oven for so long). If they surprise us and crank out even more states than that in high quality and density, then maybe 2027-2028 is on the table. But I have my doubts. 2029-2030 is my current guess for the release of Maine.

[55sixxx]

2029/2030 is just way too long... 10 years basically to finish the lower 48 is a stretch to say the least.

Let's say that ads678's prediction is on point and take into considaration the continuously growing map teams... When you look into it, by each state, the mileage total is way less than western states and the city count is much smaller... All that and the fact that on a lot of Interstates, we'll have tree walls on each side that will cut down the work on having to detail far beyond the road.

[flight50]

I agree on the size of tge map team. I am surprised to see 50 mappers for ATS honestly. The daily player base numbers doesn't justify it but the reviews do. The only way to finish the lower 48 by 2030, is more mappers. Hopefully ATS holds up. But yeah I agree ATS mappers should hold for now until ATS is more profitable.

Once the base map is rebuilt, they too can go to paid maps...at least most of them. Enough to do 4 paid maps or 2 full sized super teams.

2030 is only 8 years away.....actually might as well say 7. This year is over. The East and Midwest is trickier than you may think. Smaller states don't mean faster states. That compactness can bite.

[55sixxx]

I think Oklahoma's release time and final appeal may give us a great example of how the smaller eastern states will be done. It's the smallest state to date and will mark the shift from west to east.

[oldmanclippy]

2029/2030 is just way too long... 10 years basically to finish the lower 48 is a stretch to say the least.

Let's say that ads678's prediction is on point and take into considaration the continuously growing map teams... When you look into it, by each state, the mileage total is way less than western states and the city count is much smaller... All that and the fact that on a lot of Interstates, we'll have tree walls on each side that will cut down the work on having to detail far beyond the road.

Mileage and cities per state doesn't matter if there's more states. Map teams won't continuously grow unless the game explodes in popularity like ETS2 did. It won't. ETS2 was lightning in a bottle. Best ATS can hope for is slow steady growth. But that won't justify significant investment in more developers.

SCS right now is investing heavily in ATS in an attempt to get it up to ETS2 level popularity. Nothing about ATS right now justifies the same people working on it as for ETS2 unless it's an investment for the future. In a way then they're already using ETS2 to subsidize ATS. I think it's possible that they have 50 people on ATS for a few years, then downsize the team if the sales don't increase over time. Then reshift some focus to ETS2 where the money is. I'm with @flight50, the more I think about it the less it makes sense that ATS has such a large team on it. They have 5 times the daily players on ETS2 but the same number of employees on it. I'm certain they'd make more a LOT money in the short term if they dumped ATS tomorrow and shifted everyone over to ETS2 to make 2 big maps per year.

But that wouldn't be good in the long run. So that's why we're seeing the heavy investment in ATS right now. It's also possible that ATS DLCs don't sell 1/5 that of ETS2 DLCs, but maybe more like 1/2 if the ATS playerbase is more engaged with buying paid content. In the Xmas events we see the ETS2 base map fill up way quicker than the ATS base map in comparisons to the DLC areas of both games. Maybe I'm wrong about all this and ATS actually makes more money than we think. Then maybe continued investment is justified. It's hard to say definitively from our perspective when we don't have all that sales data and we don't know the details of the company's finances.

[55sixxx]

All I know is that they can't stay in a slow pace all the time, I really think they should increase their speed and dedicate the same level of attention they give to ETS2, to ATS. Because right now, ATS is their money maker, specially after the HoR incident.

Plus, I would like/want to see Maine coming before I turn 30, that is IF the world is still intact by then. And that is my main and only deal breaker with ATS, the fact that I see regularly videos of truck travels through out the northeast and realize it will take one helluva long time to get there in-game.

And IIRC, SCS themselves mentioned they intend to increase the release pace of states, let's just hope it becomes true.

[nautofon]

^ As you rightly point out, Limits To Growth is a thing—not just affecting the world as we know it, but also SCS games. If SCS published all of the remaining US states tomorrow, I think few would buy all of them. Think of how poker players just fold when somebody raises too fast. In order to run a sustainable business, they have to keep it slow and release content at a pace people are able and willing to follow along with.

As for the map you showed earlier: I'm half-expecting Missouri to be released before Nebraska...

[55sixxx]

Indeed, but they also can't keep releasing two or three states per year or else we'll go way beyond 2030 with an incomplete lower 48.

And regarding MO, I suppose it could work... We first get OK, KS and MO; then IL, IA and NE. BUT, I don't think it will happen since assets for Nebraska were already found in the game files.

[Quark]

It'll need to be as dense or even denser than Eastern Texas from here on out, with the exception of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Maine.

If the two key metrics are taken together, namely population density by sq miles and road density by sq miles, you could perhaps also add states like Louisiana, Vermont, Mississippi, Minnesota and West Virginia to this. With the exception of Louisiana, the other mentioned states have a higher road density but a way lower population density than WHOLE Texas. Since eastern Texas which you took as a reference is certainly much denser than that in both metrics, these states should therefore at least not exceed this density in the game either (if they should reach it at all). Louisiana looks on par with whole Texas in both points but should fall somewhat behind eastern Texas as well.
https://www.stockingblue.com/article/16 ... -us-states
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_ ... on_density